Human rights and transparency activists are intensifying calls for the release of the Senate’s CIA torture report after Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly made a last-ditch call for the Senate Intelligence Committee to delay its public disclosure.
Major Gen. Michael Lehnert, the first commander of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a leading voice against harsh interrogation techniques, reacted to the news by calling on the panel to brush aside Kerry’s concerns and release the report.
“It’s never easy to own up to past mistakes, and there’s never a good time to do it, but we’ll be stronger as a nation if we improve our detention and interrogation practices, and that’s exactly what this report will help us to do,” Lehnert said.
Kerry phoned Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, Friday to ask her to delay the release of the committee’s report on CIA torture practices during the George W. Bush administration, according to a report in Bloomberg News. Kerry said he supports the report’s release, just not next week.
The call was the result of a determination by the administration that the report’s expected release early next week could damage relationships with foreign countries at a particularly sensitive time and could pose an unacceptable risk to Americans overseas.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released a video this week threatening the life of British-born U.S. photojournalist Luke Somers. The group said he would be killed in three days if Obama doesn’t meet its demands.
Somers was killed by his captors Friday during a U.S. rescue attempt.
Yemen’s national security chief told a conference Al Qaeda was planning to kill Somers on Saturday.
“Al Qaeda promised to conduct the execution [of Somers] today so there was an attempt to save them, but unfortunately they shot the hostage before or during the attack,” he said.
Feinstein spokesman Tom Mentzer had no comment on the Bloomberg report.
Feinstein is in a particularly difficult position. Five years ago, the Senate with unanimous bipartisan support decided to begin an investigation into the harsh interrogation practices that took place in the months and years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — many at secret rendition sites overseas.
After years of work, the Intelligence Committee was ready to release a summary of the 6,000-plus-page study earlier this year, but the administration objected and demanded redactions citing national security. Feinstein and her staff spent months wrangling with the CIA and the White House over the extensiveness of those redactions, with negotiations finally wrapping up this month.
If Feinstein puts off the report past next week, she will no longer head the Senate Intelligence Committee, and her successor, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., could prevent its release when he takes over the panel. Burr initially voted against the release of the torture report, and the decision to publicly release the report would be his, according to Senate rules.
Feinstein can delay releasing the report a few weeks and drop it in early January when Congress is not in session by filing what is known as a consent agreement. But pushing it off any longer would cede control to Burr.
In addition, Bloomberg reported that Feinstein is scheduled to give a major speech about the report at a Dec. 10 gala hosted by Human Rights First, which is giving her and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., an award for their leadership in advocating against the use of torture and other cruel treatment of prisoners.
The Senate adopted the report and submitted it for declassification on bipartisan votes, and numerous military leaders, civil rights advocates and Republicans, including McCain and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, strongly support its release.
Others, such as Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, oppose its disclosure, arguing that in some cases the enhanced interrogation techniques were necessary to gain crucial intelligence and that releasing the report would only fuel more anti-American sentiment among terrorists groups.
If Feinstein decides not to release it herself, she has one last option. Outgoing Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who lost his re-election and is a strong opponent of torture in any form, could go out with a bang and invoke immunity and read the report aloud on the Senate floor, then submit it into the Congressional Record.
Several outside civil rights and transparency advocates are pressing Udall to force the report’s release this way.
The groups, which including representatives from nonprofits such as Win Without War, Code Pink, the Daily Kos and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, delivered a petition signed by more than 165,000 people to Udall’s office Thursday asking him to enter the CIA report into the Congressional Record before leaving office.
“All members of the intelligence community should be held to the highest standard, and it’s clear that several officers abused the Constitution by torturing prisoners under their care,” said Daily Kos’ Carissa Miller. “Americans have a right to know what was done in their names after 9/11.”
A survey conducted by Public Policy Polling in late September found that 69 percent of Americans think the report should be made public, while 22 percent believe it shouldn’t be and 9 percent were unsure.
The last time a senator forced the release of a such a historic, blockbuster report was in 1971 when Sen. Mike Gravel, D-Ala., entered 4,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record before the U.S. Supreme Court lifted an injunction on publishing them in the press. Gravel has called on Udall to follow his lead.
